Sant' Ilario eBook

His companion nodded in assent and the surgeon went
out through the narrow door. San Giacinto was
surprised to hear the heavy key turned in the lock
and withdrawn, but immediately accounted for the fact
on the theory that the surgeon wished to prevent any
one from finding his visitor lest the secret should
be divulged. He was not a nervous man, and had
no especial horror of being left alone in a mortuary
chamber for a few minutes. He looked about him,
and saw that the room was high and vaulted. One
window alone gave air, and this was ten feet from
the floor and heavily ironed. He reflected with
a smile that if it pleased the surgeon to leave him
there he could not possibly get out. Neither his
size nor his phenomenal strength could assist him
in the least. There was no furniture in the place.
Half a dozen slabs of slate for the bodies were built
against the wall, solid and immovable, and the door
was of the heaviest oak, thickly studded with huge
iron nails. If the dead men had been living prisoners
their place of confinement could not have been more
strongly contrived.

San Giacinto waited a quarter of an hour, and at last,
as the surgeon did not return, he sat down upon one
of the marble slabs and, being very hungry, consoled
himself by lighting a cigar, while he meditated upon
the surest means of conveying Donna Faustina to her
father’s house. At last he began to wonder
how long he was to wait.

“I should not wonder,” he said to himself,
“if that long-eared professor had taken me for
a revolutionist.”

He was not far wrong, indeed. The surgeon had
despatched a messenger for a couple of gendarmes and
had gone about his business in the hospital, knowing
very well that it would take some time to find the
police while the riot lasted, and congratulating himself
upon having caught a prisoner who, if not a revolutionist,
was at all events an impostor, since he had a card
printed with a false name.

CHAPTER VI.

The improvised banquet at the Palazzo Saracinesca
was not a merry one, but the probable dangers to the
city and the disappearance of Faustina Montevarchi
furnished matter for plenty of conversation.
The majority inclined to the belief that the girl had
lost her head and had run home, but as neither Sant’
Ilario nor his cousin returned, there was much speculation.
The prince said he believed that they had found Faustina
at her father’s house and had stayed to dinner,
whereupon some malicious person remarked that it needed
a revolution in Rome to produce hospitality in such
a quarter.

Dinner was nearly ended when Pasquale, the butler,
whispered to the prince that a gendarme wanted to
speak with him on very important business.

“Bring him here,” answered old Saracinesca,
aloud. “There is a gendarme outside,”
he added, addressing his guests, “he will tell
us all the news. Shall we have him here?”

Every one assented enthusiastically to the proposition,
for most of those present were anxious about their
houses, not knowing what had taken place during the
last two hours. The man was ushered in, and stood
at a distance holding his three-cornered hat in his
hand, and looking rather sheepish and uncomfortable.